My cousin, Mrs. Meredith, of Brunswick, Virginia, congratulated herself, when only one of her servants deserted his post to join Sheridan’s trail of camp-followers. A week after Simeon’s departure, she woke one morning to discover that six women had decamped, one leaving her two little children in her cabin from which came pitiful wails of “Mammy!” “Mammy!” Simeon had come in the night, and related of Black’s and White’s (now Blackstone) where a garrison had been established, that calico dresses were as plentiful as leaves on trees and that coloured women were parading the streets with white soldiers for beaux. My cousin, Mrs. White, said a whole wagon-load of negro women passed her house going to Blackstone, and that one of them insisted upon presenting her with a four-year-old child, declaring it too much trouble. It was not an unknown thing for negro mothers to leave their children along the roadsides.
Blackstone drew recruits until there was just one woman-servant remaining with the Merediths. Why she stayed was a mystery, but as she was “the only pebble on the beach,” everything was done to make home attractive. One day she asked permission (why, could not be imagined) to go visiting. She did not return. Shortly, Captain Meredith was haled before the Freedmen’s Bureau at Black’s and White’s to answer the charge of thrashing Viny. Marched into court, he took a chair. “Get up,” said the Bureau Agent, “and give the lady a seat.” He rose, and Viny dropped into it. She was shamefaced and brazen by turns; finally, burst into tears and begged “Mars Tawm’s” pardon, saying she had brought the charge because she had “no ’scuse for leavin’” and had to invent one; “nevver knowed Mars Tawm was gwi be brung in cote ’bout it.”
The early stirrings of the social equality problem were curious. Adventurous Aunt Susan tried the experiment of “eatin’ wid white folks.” She was bursting to tell us about it, yet loath to reveal her degradation—“White folks dat’ll eat wid me ain’t fitten fuh me to eat wid,” being the negro position. “But dese folks was rale quality, Miss,” Susan said when murder was out. “I kinder skittish when dee fus’ ax me to set down wid ’em. I couldn’ eat na’er mouthful wid white folks a-lookin’ at me an’ a rale nice white gal handin’ vittles. An’ presen’ly, mum, ef I didn’ see dat white gal settin’ in de kitchen eatin’ her vittles by herse’f. Rale nice white gal! I say, ‘Huccum you didn’ eat wid tur white folks?’ She say, ‘I de servant.’”
Mrs. Betts, of Halifax (Va.), was in her kitchen, her cook, who was in her debt, having failed to put in an appearance. The cook’s husband approached the verandah and requested a dollar. “Where is Jane?” he was asked. “Why hasn’t she been here to do her work?” “She are keepin’ parlour.” “What is that?” “Settin’ up in de house hol’in’ her han’s. De Civilise Bill done been fulfill an’ niggers an’ white folks jes alike now.”
Coloured applicant for menial position would say to the door-opener: “Tell dat white ’oman in dar a cullud lady out here want to hire.” “De cullud lady” was capricious. My sister in Atlanta engaged one for every day in one month, in fact, engaged more than that average, engaged every one applying, hoping if ten promised to come in time to get breakfast, one might appear.
With two hundred black trial justices, South Carolina had more than her share of funny happenings, as of tragic. A gentleman who had to appear before some tribunal, wrote us: “Whom do you suppose I found in the seat of law? Pete, my erstwhile stable-boy. He does not know A from Z, had not the faintest idea of what was to be done. ‘Mars Charles,’ he said, ‘you jes fix ’tup, please, suh. You jes write down whut you think orter be wroted, an’ I’ll put my mark anywhar you tell me.’”
Into a store in Wilmington sauntered a sable alderman whom the merchant had known from boyhood as “Sam.” “What’s the matter with Sam?” the merchant asked as Sam stalked out. Soon, Sam stalked back. “Suh, you didn’ treat me wid proper respecks.” “How, Sam?” “You called me ‘Sam,’ which my name is Mr. Gary.” “You’re a d—d fool! There’s the door!” Gary had the merchant up in the mayor’s court. “What’s the trouble?” asked the mayor. “Dis man consulted me.” “You ought to feel flattered! What did he do to you?” “He called me ‘Sam,’ suh.” “Ain’t that your name?” “My name’s Mr. Gary.” “Ain’t it Sam, too?” “Yessuh, but—” “Well, there ain’t any law to compel a man to call another ‘Mister.’ Case dismissed.” “Dar gwi be a law ’bout dat,” muttered Sam.
Washington was the place of miracles. When Uncle Peter went there, some tricksters told him his wool could be made straight and his colour changed—“Said dee could make it jes lak white folks’ ha’r,” he informed his mistress mournfully, when he had paid the price—nearly his entire capital—and returned home with flaming red wool. His wife did not know him, or pretended not to, and drove him out of the house. He appealed to his mistress and she made Manda behave herself.
“Ole Miss,” asked my mother’s little handmaiden, “now, I’se free, is I gwi tu’n white lak white folks?” “You must not be ashamed of the skin God gave you, Patsy,” said her mistress kindly. “Your skin is all right.” “But I druther be white, Ole Miss.” And there was something pathetic in the aspiration.
Some of the older and more intelligent blacks held their children back from doffing with undignified haste old ways for new. But in most cases, the Simian quality showed itself promptly ascendant. Negroes did things they saw white people do, not because these things were right or seemly, but because white people did them, selecting for imitation trifles in conduct which they thought marked the social dividing line between white and black. As, for instance, they dropped the old sweet “Daddy” and “Mammy” for the dreadful “Pa” and “Ma,” or the infantile “Popper” and “Mommer” which white people inflict upon parents. It would be laughable to hear a big buck negro addressing his sire as “Popper.”